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Monday, 11 March 2013

Win A Fantastic Organic Vegbox

Riverford deliver fresh and delicious award-winning organic vegboxes packed with tasty and great looking food directly from the farm straight to your door and for this months competition we have one of their delicious hampers to give away.

Riverford offers a range of weekly organic essentials like vegetables as well eggs, milk, meat, juices and cereals, they can even deliver wine and chocolate when you need a treat and their amazing Organic vegboxes start from just £10.45. The Riverford box scheme began when Guy Watson started delivering vegetables locally to 30 friends in Devon. They now deliver around 40,000 boxes a week to homes around the UK from their regional farms. Ordering is easy and flexible, delivery is free and you don’t even need to be at home. www.riverford.co.uk

The prize is a large vegbox with meet that will be enough organic meat and veg to feed 4+ people for around a week. Typically 12 veg varieties with potatoes, carrots and onions most weeks. You’ll also get 3 RSPCA award-winning meat items that will always include a joint and mince, plus a different cut such as diced chicken.

To be in with a chance of winning simply leave a comment below to tell us your favourite freshly prepared meal and why you like it. The prize will be drawn from a hat containing all valid entries.

Extra entries can be made by sharing this competition on Twitter (include #DiligentGardener) or by liking our page and sharing the competition on Facebook.

Terms and conditions: This competition closes at 23.59 on 31 March 2013. Any entries received after this time will not be counted. Entrants must be UK residents aged 18 years or older to enter. By entering this competition you agree and consent to your name being published and by taking part in the competition, entrants are deemed to have read, understood and accepted all of the Terms and Conditions and agreed to be bound by them. The winner will be selected at random from the valid entries and will be announced here on the blog. Please make sure we are able to contact you if you do win.

Karen & Lablass those both sound fab. I suggest you try my recommendation which is Ratatouille cooked as per Nigel Slater's recipe where you cook each item separately before adding to the pot - it's definiately worth the effort as it really makes a difference to the flavours and if you go easy on the oil it's not too unhealthy ;-) He also recommends making a crumble with the leftovers but so far there hasn't ever been any :-(

This time of year I love a bowl of homemade soup. You can throw your veg, meat/fish homemade stock into the slow cooker and when you come home it's sitting there waiting for you. Just add some good bread - yum

Home made Pasta Bake - made with steak mince, veg, tinned tomatoes and herbs all covered over with pasta in a cheese sauce and finished off in the oven.I love this so much because we all eat this dish as a family - even my fussy teen daughter never has a complaint when we have this for dinner.

A traditional roast beef dinner with the meat still pink, the potatoes roasted and mashed and beautifully rich gravy. I love it because it's a family favourite, reminds me of my childhood and gives me pleasure to see my children cook it well too.

I love a quiche stuffed with beetroot onions bacon and peas and topped off with herby breadcrumbs it was the first thing my boyfriend made me and it was delicious and an incredibly sweet thing for him to do!

Its got to be feshly made stew made with beef and carrots,onions served with creamy mashed potato`s and dumplings and i love this meal because its so comforting in winter and also because it reminds me of staying with my gran and her cooking it every week and eventually showing me how to make `proper` mashed pots and dumplings and i still cant make them as good as her!

My favourite is fresh salmon fried with dille and lemon, served with new potatoes and mixed green salad. I make a big portion, but afterwards I always feel revived and refreshed rather than stuffed and overfed. Nothing beats real fresh food!

A chicken dinner with yorkshire puddings,stuffing, carrots,turnip,cauliflower and broccoli and not to forget roast potatoes. It is delicious and it is the one time me and my family all get together to eat it on a Sunday

My dad grew all our vegetables, and strawberries and rhubarb. I remember eating Sunday roast with potatoes, and vegetables from the garden with fresh rhubarb stewed with gran's home made custard. Delicious.

Having my mum's mince 'slop' - minced beef, oxo cubes, onion, broad beans and tinned potatoes with homemade bread rolls and lots of butter always reminds me of my childhood and good memories, never quite the same when I make my own though!

I love a veggie curry. It reminds me of days where money was really tight and I made a massive batch and froze it in portions. I never got fed up of it and always felt pleased I enjoyed something so healthy so much!!

My favourite dish is to take an organic chicken, put it in a large pot, and add as many different organic vegetables as I can lay my hands on, i.e. onions, mushrooms, carrots, leeks, celery, potatoes, etc. (which I dice) and enough chicken stock to cover. I then let it simmer gently for about an hour or two (depends on the size of the chicken). Then I remove the chicken from the stock, blend part of the stock/vegetables to thicken the sauce naturally but making sure there are still lots of 'bits' left, add a little cream and seasoning, and then serve it poured over the chicken which has been sliced and put onto plates - maybe add a little broccoli as well to the plate. It's rather yummy.

We love to slow smoke a shoulder of pork in our smoker. It goes best with home grown slaw (carrots,cabbage and onions) and new potatoes yummy. As it's winter at the mo we love a good jambalaya packed with plenty of seafood,tomatoes, celery,sweetcorn herbs and spices mmmmm

Home made, home grown vegetable soup, thick and creamy with lots of root veg - how comforting on such a cold day. In fact, I have some carrots, onion, parsnips and squash (sadly not home grown but organic of course - roasting in the oven as we speak - ready to liquidise for today's lunch!

Homemade gnocchi with creamy pesto sauce. It's my favourite because (if you get the gnocchi just right) it's so light and fluffy, and getting the recipe for the sauce right was a labour of love - I'd been served the sauce in an Italian restaurant once, and I couldn't find a recipe for it anywhere so I experimented with the ingredients until I got the balance just right :-)

I love a whole wheat tortilla filled with organic baby spinach, smoked salmon & some sliced avocado drizzled with lemon juice with a dash of salt & freshly ground pepper. Super healthy and so yum! This is my favourite lunch that I can take to work with me.

I love a gorgeous vegetable lasagne - with plenty of my granddads home grown courgettes.. My nanna used to make an amazing veggie lasagne for me but she is poorly now and can't cook anymore. I make my own now but it's never as good as my nanna's :-(

Try a lamb hotpot with lots of fresh mixed veg but for a twist on the top add some home made dumplings made with mint, only let them sit on the top though as it makes the tops all crispy. Delicious :) Great in this cold weather.

I used to hate squashes, from a cook's perspective, just because of the sheer hell of preparing them , however last year I was trying to loose weight and started roasting veggies to eat as a low cal meal, roast squash with pepper and nutmeg is just gorgeous and worth the work out of getting the skins off. Us them with so many different things but with a little olive oil could just eat small roasted chunks with pasta and pecorino.

Gosh Ive just read the Majority of peoples..and feel very hungry now! Hmm well Mine has to be A deep filled with nice crisp top steak and kidney pie,creamy mash and fresh veggies not the most healthiest of options but lovely and warming especially in this weather :-) Lovely giveaway, bluemonkeyuk@yahoo.co.uk

My favourite meal is a hearty vegetable 'stew' made up of any spare veg (preferably organic)together with a couple of tablespoons of wholegrain Basmati rice in a vegetable stock to which a good tablespoon of Turmeric mixed with a little olive oil has been added and plenty of freshly ground pepper. The stew is full of antioxidants and is a good boost for the body's immune system. I serve wholemeal and oatbran sundried tomatoes and blue cheese muffins with the stew.

We make a rustic vegeterian curry with rice - it's rustic as my 4 year old loves chopping up the vegetables so they are all different shapes and sizes. But it still tastes yummy :)And was fun preparing too...

I love making chilli con carne as I make a healthy version, small amount of lean mince that is drained from fat once browned but I put in carrots and red peppers finely chopped as well as the kidnet beans and tomatoes, plenty of chilli and spices and it really bulks it up and tastes so much better than a ready made one, mmm making me hungry!

I LOVE Chinese style crispy chilli chicken! I recreated the recipe from scratch, and it tastes just like the food from our local take-out! I'm so pleased because I can't eat soy and gluten anymore and my recipe tastes identical to the dish I used to love, but without these ingredients that make me poorly! Yay!

About

The Diligent Gardener is an online gardening magazine based in the UK for keen gardeners. Whether you’ve got a garden, allotment, or balcony, you’ll find all the gardening ideas and advice you need to create a beautiful and truly satisfying private space to relax and be at home in. As well as tips and ideas for your own garden we can share with you the best days out and competitions.